There are a few key ingredients that make up life on earth. One of the first is carbon. All life on Earth is centered around carbon and carbon building blocks. For the most part, at least. There is some highly controversial evidence suggesting the evidence of silicate based microbes but that’s an entirely different subject and rightly so. Earth on life, as far as we know it, is carbon based and has been since the beginning. Scientifically speaking, no one is quite sure why or how life formed out of the primal ooze very early on in our planet’s history. There are several theories, all of which are interesting but conflicting with each other. The first is the idea of highly charged energy causing reactions in protein based solutions. The easier way of saying that is that lightning struck some of the tidal pools and started the spontaneous reorganization of complex cellar structures. Protein building blocks had enough energy to start changing and growing and eventually led to the first unicellular life. This is a popular theory but it also smacks a little of hand waving. It is certainly possible but there is no way to prove it. Another theory is called pan spermia which is a little more out there but no less intriguing. It suggests that life on earth began when nutrient and carbon rich comets struck the early earth’s surface and combined with the natural elements to kickstart life. It’s a fun theory, of course, but the biggest problem is that we just do not know if comets carry the elements essential for life. There is good evidence they do but we haven’t visited many so this theory is still just that. A theory. There is also the theory that life began deep in undersea vents where high energy sulfur vents put out enough energy overall for proteins to begin to change structures on their own. Interesting but we don’t yet have advanced enough technology to really test this theory with actual vents. The sea floor is still too remote and difficult to reach to test this effectively. Regardless of what happened, we do know that carbon is the basis for all life on earth. Sorry silicate microbes. That’s just the way it is. But there is one other essential ingredient life needs that didn’t actually exist on Earth in any substantial form in the beginning. That’s right. Water.
Water is Everywhere
Many people don’t know this but water in liquid form was incredibly rare on Earth for most of its early history. There was a bit of ice and water vapor but liquid water was nowhere to be found. It was too hot most places for liquid water to exist in any quantity. There was no need for a water softener or a reverse osmosis system or even anyone to ask why do I need reverse osmosis? There were no water softener dealers or an rv water filtration system or anything of the sort. In fact, the time it would take for a thinking being intelligent enough to ask why do I need reverse osmosis would be billions of years in the future. Eventually, of course, there would be someone intelligent enough to ask why do i need reverse osmosis but the journey to get to that point was long and strange and arduous. First, there needed to be liquid water at all and that inadvertently became the job of the first living organisms to provide. For, you see, the very first stromatolites were the ones who provided the water over two billion years. Stromatolites, for those who don’t know, were large mats of microbes growing on land and in the primal ooze. Back then, they would have looked like big green carpets growing everywhere. These microbes took in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provided oxygen, a newer element for the earth that hadn’t existed in large quantities in the atmosphere before. Gradually, these microbes put enough oxygen in the air that the earth began to cool down and diversify, eventually leading to huge liquid water rainstorms that poured everywhere. First water, then complex life then eventually a person intelligent enough to ask why do i need reverse osmosis?